The first two are basic and are typical of the type of testing we perform at Epi. And after drinking through the Bruvi’s capabilities, it truly delivers. My issue with pod coffee makers has always been that the coffee, if it tastes like anything at all, is burnt. The Bruvi’s solution is to use considerably more accurate temperature control, altering temperatures as well as other brewing factors such as pressure and brew time to produce more flavoured coffee. 

I’m not going to get carried away and suggest it can replace a carefully brewed pour-over or a high-end espresso machine, but if your only experience with single-serve coffee makers has been the cheap Keurig in someone’s waiting room, this is a major step up in quality.

The Bruvi also performs a good job with various coffee drinks. The cold brew is actually smoother and easier to drink than the other options. It’s worth noting that what Bruvi refers to as cold brew is actually coffee brewed with their precision heater, which quickly heats up and then quickly cools to 120°F for brewing. They claim that anything brewed below 170°F provides the coffee the lower acidity that many enjoy in cold brew—and, after tasting, I believe they are correct. This is the only single-serve maker capable of producing coffee at such a low temperature in under eight minutes.

The espresso shot has a lovely head of crema on top. The machine also makes excellent tea and Americanos. As previously stated, the Bruvi can brew between 120°F and 200°F, automatically sensing the temperature and pressure to use according on the pod and settings you select. Again, this isn’t an idealised version for methods like cold brew, but the objective of the Bruvi, like all pod machines, is speed and convenience. The results are fast, easy, and better than what we’ve been conditioned to expect.

All of this functionality is housed in a clever, clean-looking box with brilliant whites and light wood accents, as well as an intuitive and simple-to-use touchscreen, making it the uncommon coffee maker that could actually improve the look of your kitchen.

Now, I don’t have the resources or the time to independently verify all of the environmental allegations, but here’s what we do know. The company prepares its coffee capsules, known as B-pods, with a bio enzyme that causes them to degrade substantially faster in a landfill than a standard untreated coffee pod while leaving no microplastics behind, claiming that a B-pod degrades 63% in 577 days while an untreated pod degrades only 2%. It publishes its test results here. As a result, unlike than the recycling technique utilised by companies like Nespresso, which requires consumers to bag and mail their pods out for processing, B-pods are designed to be thrown away.

A pod machine can never really replicate the coffee you get from freshly ground beans, manually gauging water temperature, and properly dosing it, either in terms of taste or environmental impact, but the Bruvi comes the closest. And this is just one careful coffee brewer’s opinion (other folks at Epi have various perspectives), but it’s the only one I’d recommend so far.